Stuff I've Been Reading: A Monthly Column (12/08)
I usually have brief reviews and cover art for each of the books that appear in the "BOOKS READ" section. I'm too lazy to write much of anything right now, but I wanted to post this today so it would appear in 2008 instead of 2009. I'll probably eventually get around to writing about each of the books (for completion's sake), but I have no idea when that'll be. Come back later if you must know my thoughts on The Railway Children, etc. Until then, here's what I have so far.
BOOKS ACQUIRED:
(* = Christmas gift)
- Harold Lloyd's Hollywood Nudes in 3-D!--Suzanne Lloyd
- McSweeney's #29--Dave Eggers (editor)
- Star Wars: Shipyards of Doom--Henry Gilroy
- The Pulchritudinous Review--Renee Zepeda (editor)
- Ulysses--James Joyce
- Cloud Atlas--David Mitchell
- Betty Page Confidential--Bunny Yeager*
- Bettie Page: The Life of a Pin-up Legend--James L. Swanson & Karen Essex*
- The Magic Mountain--Thomas Mann*
- The Walking Dead, Book 3--Robert Kirkman*
- The Walking Dead, Book 4--Robert Kirkman*
- An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories: Volume 1--Ivan Brunetti (editor)*
- An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories: Volume 2--Ivan Brunetti (editor)*
- From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweller--E.L. Konigsburg
- The Passion--Jeanette Winterson
- The Master and Margarita--Mikhail Bulgakov
BOOKS READ:
Stories in the Worst Way--Gary Lutz
I don't know what to make of Gary Lutz. Some of his sentences--even
some of his paragraphs--are brilliant, but he never once carries that
brilliance through an entire story. Just when they start to get
interesting, the stories abruptly end with a completely random image
or comment. Not one of these stories features characters with names
doing anything meaningful or progressing through anything that even
slightly resembles a plot. Someday there will be a robot that writes
short stories. It will eventually put the human writers out of
business. It's going to take awhile for the robot to work out all the kinks,
though. I'm pretty sure its early rough drafts are going to read like the
stories of Gary Lutz...all literary trickery and no soul.
The Dain Curse/The Glass Key--Dashiell Hammett
The Dain Curse and The Glass Key were my third and fourth Dashiell Hammett novels of 2008. To be completely honest, the four books have mixed-up in my mind with The Maltese Falcon (which I read a couple years ago) to form one big, hard-boiled detective novel full of opium, jewel heists, violence, and murder. All the plotlines and characters are muddled together, and I can't remember what happened in which book. Regarding The Dain Curse, all I can remember is that it started off with the Continental Op investigating some missing diamonds. Before long, he's looking into the Scientologists or some such nonsense. Of the five novels, it's probably my favorite.
As far as The Glass Key goes, I think it's safe to say that the Coen brothers were inspired by it when they made Miller's Crossing. When I say they were "inspired by it", what I really mean is that they blatantly ripped it off. That's fine with me, though, as their movie is much better than Hammett's book.
Star Wars: Shipyards of Doom--Henry Gilroy
This little comic book came as a bonus with the special edition of the Star Wars: The Clone Wars
DVD. The sole purpose of the comic (and the movie) is to convince
today's children that in a galaxy far, far away, there once lived a
clone trooper named Rex who ran around without a helmet and shot up
droids with a pair of pistols.
The Railway Children--E. Nesbit
This is a children's book originally published in 1906. It's about three young siblings who move to the English countryside with their mother after their father mysteriously disappears. The family no longer has the money it once had, so the children have to find ways to entertain themselves that don't involve the expensive toys they had back in London. The local railway station becomes their playground. I know it sounds unsafe, but I guess children were allowed to play on and around trains back then. The kids make friends with the locals and have numerous train-related adventures. It's not all fun and games, though. In the back of their minds, they're wondering what happened to their father and if he'll ever return to them.
Chapter 11 didn't make any sense to me, but the rest of the book was first-rate. I'm not sure if today's children would be interested in this book, but I would highly recommend it to adult readers with an interest in children's literature.
McSweeney's #29--Dave Eggers (editor)
Taken as a whole, this was one of the best McSweeney's in recent memory. Highlights included "It's Nice When Someone Is Excited to Hear from You" by Brian Baise and "The Land of Our Enemies" by Nathaniel Minton. I also enjoyed "The Painting" by Roddy Doyle. The best short story in the book was "A Record of Our Debts" by Laura Hendrix. It's about a town dying of a mysterious illness that seems to have originated with a little girl. The story featured one of the best sentences I've read in a long time. Here it is:
Lon shuffles his feet as we walk. I have always admired his gait, and though to some it might make him look ill or lame, I love the look of it, the lines his toe drags in the dusty road, so that when we walk together and I look behind us I can see the proof of where we have been.
Unfortunately, some of the book didn't meet the standard set by Laura Hendrix and the other authors I've mentioned. One story was so bad that I would feel remiss in my duties as a half-assed book reviewer if I didn't point it out. I am referring to "My Crush on Hilary Duff" by Blaze Ginsberg. With the possible exception of the story David Foster Wallace published under pseudonym, "My Crush on Hilary Duff" is the biggest waste of paper in the history of McSweeney's. I'm guessing Dave Eggers lost a bet.
The Braindead Megaphone--George Saunders
I'm not usually a big non-fiction reader, but I decided to give The Braindead Megaphone a try because I love the short stories of George Saunders and the collection came highly recommended by people I respect. Although a couple of the essays fell short (specifically "A Survey of the Literature") most everything in the book was interesting and well worth reading.
I got the most reading enjoyment out of Saunders' travel writings, but the best essay in the collection was probably the one that opened the book. I am, of course, talking about "The Braindead Megaphone", the twenty page media-skewering essay that gave the book its name. I would like to officially declare that everyone who works in the field of news media should be required to read that one essay. Maybe then the talking heads and those who pull their strings would think twice about the quality of the stories and the manner in which they try to pass them off on the public. Oh, and everyone in government should also be required to read the same essay... just so they could contemplate this line:
The shortfall between the imagined and the real, multiplied by the violence of one's intent, equals the evil one will do.
Wrap your chimpanzee brain around that one, W.
The Lottery and Other Stories--Shirley Jackson
This collection was called The Lottery and Other Stories and that's really a good way to look at it...in two parts. The first part is "The Lottery", a spooky story that was supposedly shocking when it was first published in 1948. I found it to be a bit on the predictable side. Once the boys started gathering rocks (on the first page), I could see how things were going to end for the lottery's "winner". Not much there.
Fortunately, the "Other Stories" part of the collection was consistently better than "The Lottery" itself. Although Shirley Jackson's reputation was made by "The Lottery", I much preferred her non-spooky tales.
So Long, See You Tomorrow--William Maxwell
In William Maxwell's So Long, See You Tomorrow, the elderly narrator looks back on a murder that took place in his neighborhood when he was a child. Although he knows the ramifications of what happened, he doesn't really know much about about the actual murder itself. In an attempt to come to terms with the murder and the effect it had on his own life, he imagines the events that led up to it.
So Long, See You Tomorrow won the American Book Award in 1980 (not to be confused with the more prestigious National Book Award). It must've been a slow year as the book seemed to me like a slightly less enjoyable Kent Haruf novel. It's a good book, but nothing special.
Harold Lloyd's Hollywood Nudes in 3-D!--Suzanne Lloyd
I bought this book solely for the pictures in the chapter entitled "Jiggle All the Way". I've always had a thing for women dressed up in red velvet and white fur trim. I'm festive that way and don't feel the need to apologize.
- From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweller--E.L. Konigsburg
Comments
That there's a whole lotta acquisitions. Santa and the reindeer must have been relieved to take a load off at your chimney.
It just occurred to me that From the Mixed-Up Files is the first art history mystery I ever read. I hope you are enjoying it. (And I want to read your impressions of The Railway Children and the 3-D Glasses whenever you feel like sharing them.)
I haven't made much progress in From the Mixed-up Files.
(Now just one more to go.)
Wow, do I disagree about "My Crush on Hilary Duff."
[Funny - Originally wrote a longer comment above]
Your feelings about "My Crush On Hilary Duff" might be different -- or not -- given that the piece is non-fiction. It is the diary/memoir (from a book to be published this year) by a teenager, Blaze Ginsberg, diagnosed with high-functioning autism. (Although as I first read the piece, and liked it, I didn't know if it was non-fiction, or a fictional depiction of such a person.) I think the formal inventiveness of treating your own life as if each day was an episode in a television series, and writing your diary in the form of a tv guide description of the episode, was striking and funny. The formal device of the tv guide descriptions not only was perfect for conveying this person's view of the world and his self, but as an alienating device usefully sheds light on society as a whole. I thought the specifics touching and amusing. And any person's, on the autism spectrum or not, attempt to enter the mysterious world of sexuality and sociability is as big an adventure, and as strong a metaphor, as the mysterious curses, or civilization-creating adventures, depicted in the other stories in that issue. It was sort of a more real, less melodramatic and formally more daring version of "It's Nice When Someone Is Excited to Hear from You," which I also liked quite a bit.
But, you know, different tastes make the world interesting.
I agree with you that this issue of McSweeney's was quite strong.
With the possible exception of Anne Frank, there aren't any teen journals I care to read. It doesn't matter to me if the author is autistic or if they had to go to fat camp or if they grew up in Darfur. The lives of teenagers (as written by teenagers) just don't make for good reading. Perhaps there's a teen out there who has an interesting story to tell and the ability to tell it. Blaze Ginsberg is not that teen. He might have a story worth telling, but he doesn't yet have the writing ability to make it worth reading. There's nothing inventive or daring about "My Crush on Hilary Duff." It's just a kid's journal entries...no more worthwhile or literary than the ones you or I used to keep. I think McSweeney's lowered their standards considerably by publishing it.
Having said that, I wish the author the best with his upcoming book. Although it's not something I'll bother reading, I know that memoirs are hot and book clubs eat that stuff up. With any luck, Blaze Ginsberg's book will be selling in Starbucks at this time next year and my mom will be reading it with all the neighborhood ladies.
In that case, I think a better way to comment on the piece would have been to have been up front about the fact you reject the whole idea that a teen journal can be interesting, rather than making it sound like this particular piece was so bad that the only explanation is that the editor was forced to print it for non-literary reasons. I have no problem with a person or critic being uninterested in a particular genre or subject matter, but its a little unfair not to let your readers know that when you condemn a particular instance as excreable, the only possible example that might not be is Anne Frank. Why'd you even read it?
To me, the limitations of the teenage viewpoint are occasionally balanced by the interest of reading in detail about a developing personality trying to figure out the world. And the frame on the world provided by a first-person autistic viewpoint seems instructive and interesting about much. I find the question of how the mind and personality interact with the world to be the central question that literature can illuminate. I don't think the fact that the writer is a teenager changes that, whether the particular teen be Blaze Ginsberg, Susan Sontag, Anne Frank, Holden Caufield or Huckleberry Finn.
It is fun disputing this with you. Thanks.
I've had fun, too. Thanks.